Well, I finally got the gumption to drop the cash and buy the specialty parts for my CNC router, and the first batch arrived yesterday, exactly 3 years to the day that I made a post about the crazy treadle lathe.

I made that lathe shaped object in order to make other things, and I plan to make the El Cheapo CNC machine to make things too. Hopefully El Cheapo doesn’t end up as scrap in a classroom problem solving lab.

Roller chain, drive sprockets, and idler sprockets. I am not sure how the cat is supposed to fit in the machine.

So it begins. I’m hoping that within a few months, I’ll have a working machine.

Howdy to all of the spambots and lost souls out there. I have been wanting to build a CNC router for a long time, but I have finally decided to pull the trigger. The machine will have a 4’x2′ work area and a roughly 5’x3′ footprint. The goal of the build is to make a low cost, versatile, medium format CNC router capable of machining hardwoods.

Originally I wanted to make a 4’x8′ machine, but the numbers just didn’t work out. Also, given that this is my first attempt at designing and building a CNC from scratch, it just made sense to scale back. Additionally, I’d really like to build a machine that could handle aluminum, but the materials required to achieve that level of rigidity priced me out of the game.

Most of the CNC builds I’ve come across online have pretty poor documentation, and make very bold claims about the budget used to build the machine. I can’t tell you how many “under $1000″ CNC machines I have found where the maker had magical access to an extra $2000 dollars worth of parts. I will post step by step instructions as well as a complete bill of materials so that others can learn from my comical mistakes design, and hopefully be able to make a good machine for a low price point.

Here’s a model of the machine without drive components. Stan Lee is included for scale. He seems a little small.

Now that we’re well into February, I’ve decided that it’s a great time to post one of the Christmas gifts I made.

It’s a Do-Nothing machine. I have specifically designed it to maximize the amount of nothing that gets done while using it. I made an instructable for it so that other people could build it and also do nothing.

Today I was on the internet and somehow bungled into an awesome video, and thought, “Hey, what if I had a much neglected website frequented only by spambots and hapless souls to share this with?” Shortly thereafter, I realized I had just such a website.

So, it’s been a while, but I finally got around to some dealywhopping.

Hi, I'm a Davincibot.

I put together an instructable for these little robot toys I’ve had kicking around for a while and posted them to thingiverse. I’ve decided to call them Davincibots, and I have visions of people making them, coming up with all sorts of cool parts to fit on them, and trading them around. We’ll see what happens.

YAY!

I’m not sure what came over me, but I even entered the instructable in a contest.

That’s right. It finally happened. I’ve become one of those people that posts videos on youtube. It’s a sad state of affairs, but I couldn’t think of a better way to share a video of the Frankinstrument. I should have referenced LOLcats or planking or something, but I don’t think they’re even cool anymore. I don’t know what the kids are up to these days.